Puff Pastry Apple Roses

We make these cute mini apple rose tarts using puff pastry sheet, cream cheese, brown sugar and apple slices. So the sweet and savory flavors in this easy puff pastry dessert with apples are perfectly balanced.

Aaaand these are like individual apple pies with a fancy look that fit any special day like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentines Day or even baby showers.

Get ready to learn how to make apple roses in the easiest way! I promise you will be proud of yourself in the end.

How Do You Make A Rose Out Of An Apple?

To make a rose out of an apple, you need to slice the apple first and then cook them for 1-2 minutes until they get flexible enough. The rest is the fun part.

Arrange these softened apple slices on a puff pastry strip so that half of them overlap on another and roll it up to make an apple rose dessert. It is that easy! Read on for more details and step by step pictures.

Ingredients

• Apples: Use crispy and red apples for this recipe like Jazz apple, Gala, Pink Lady or Honeycrisp. 
• Puff Pastry: This is the key ingredient to make these amazing baked apple roses easily. The only thing you need is to thaw the puff pastry and then cut it into strips. If you use a puff pastry block, then you need to roll it out first and then cut into strips.
• Cream Cheese: There are varieties of cream cheese at markets. As this is a dessert recipe, use plain cream cheese; preferably full-fat.
• Brown sugar: It is better in baking but you can definitely use regular sugar. If you want refined sugar-free pastry roses, use coconut sugar instead. 
• Butter: For brushing the muffin tin. You can just use a cooking spray instead.

Alternative Add-Ins:

In addition to the ingredients above, you can also add:

• cinnamon
• walnuts 
• apricot jam or pumpkin jam

Note: If you want to use apricot jam in your puff pastry apple roses, leave brown sugar out. Also, you might need to use less cream cheese so that the roses are not overloaded. 

How To Make The Recipe

Making apple rose pastry is waaaaay easier than you think. The recipe has two main folds:

Preparing apples: Slice the apples (with their skin on) thinly, but don’t make them paper thin. A sharp knife will work well for this. No need for a mandoline.

Immediately transfer them into a water and lemon juice mixture. This will prevent them from losing their color. Cook them until slightly soft. Drain the apple slices and transfer them on a kitchen towel. Alternatively, you can microwave the apples on high power for 90 seconds.

Making apple roses following the steps below.

Cut a puff pastry sheet into 6-7 strips. Spread cream cheese and sprinkle sugar (and cinnamon if you want) over it or spread apricot jam.

Place apple slices on the upper edge of strips so that half of them overlaps one another and their skin side is sticking out. Fold up the bottom of the strip.

Then roll it up. Please check out the images above to see how to make these steps.

Place them in a muffin tin and bake.

Tip on How To Keep The Baked Apple Roses From Getting Burnt: In our experience, they don’t burn. But you might have that problem depending on the oven. So there is a very easy method to protect the roses. Just cover them loosely with foil and then bake.

Can I Make Roses With Another Fruit?

Apples work very well to make rose pastry, but peaches and pears work fine too. Haven’t tried it yet, but persimmons could be another option. Worth trying. Would love to hear your ideas if you try this recipe with another fruit. 

How To Serve

These puff pastry roses are perfectly flaky when served warm. We love to sift a little powdered sugar over them right before serving because they look even more beautiful that way. Alternatively, you can drizzle maple syrup or caramel sauce over them if you want them sweeter. 

FAQs